MADISON - A dozen members of the state Assembly plan to tour a potential mine site in far northwestern Wisconsin.
Republicans are pushing a bill to streamline state mining regulations in hopes of persuading Gogebic Taconite to dig a huge open-pit iron mine along the border between Ashland and Iron counties.
Rep. Mary Czaja, a freshman Republican from Irma, is organizing a tour of the site for Friday morning.
The site is outside Czaja's district, but aide Emily Loe says Czaja toured the site several weeks ago, found the visit productive and thought other legislators would benefit from seeing the area.
Loe says six Republicans and six Democrats have agreed to the visit. She says the visit is informal and the legislators will pay their own way.
MINOCQUA - These plants may look pretty but they're taking over our rivers and lakes. Michele Sadauskas is Oneida County's Aquatic Invasive Species Coordinator. She is working to map and control the yellow iris, the plant you see here. She and two other conservation workers spent the day weeding Stacks Bay.
"They invade our wetlands. They're a really robust, aggressive plant. What they do is they crowd out our native species and make actually the wetland a lot less diverse," says Michele Sadauskas, Oneida County AIS Coordinator.
Removing yellow iris is a slow process. It takes three hours of work just to properly map and control 20 feet of shoreline.
MERRILL - Farmers in Lincoln and Langlade Counties may need to make a longer drive or call a different office for USDA services.
The Merrill Service Center will be temporarily split up between Rhinelander, Wausau, and Medford.
The Farm Service Agency will move to the Wausau Service Center and the Natural Resources Conservation Service will be relocated to the Rhinelander and Medford Centers.
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